Right, i was wondering which of these chipsets is better ? and i know there are always things which are better on each, so ill tell you what im looking for - Good 2D speed! - Good gaming speed! - Good dIvx playback speed! so generally good speed and stability! There are 2 boards in particular im looking at one each, the KT400 one is the Gigabyte GA-7VAXP, which I know is meant to be right near the top of the KT400 range at the moment! On the nForce2 POV im looking at the Abit NF7-S, which I know isnt released to later this month (which is why if I go for it, im gonna be etting it on presumptions of speed based on what the nforce2 is all about!) The Abit seems pretty sweet, future ready! both have 8x AGP which is a must for me. And a little fan on the chipset (cause there really cool ). Features wise the abit seems to have won over the gigabyte board and of course you will get abit excellent overclockability (no doubt) and BIOS. Of course, from what it looks like, the abit doesnt have RAID, and although I have no use for it now, i keep asking myself, will I ever have a need for it! I have had problems before with buying stuff then i get something which wont run to its full potential on it (this mobo is 2x AGP, 4x AGP had just come out and i have a card capacble of 4x in now ) so what does anyone else think ? we all know the KT400 isnt all it should be, and Nvidia do make excellent everything! Is the nForce2 so ?
I am currently running an nForce 1 board and have been very happy with it. However, it wasn't perfect, and nVidia have learnt from their mistakes. The nForce 2 chipset is the highest performance AMD platform currently available. The on board features are also incredible. If you get one, make sure it has the MCP-T southbridge, as the sound quality produced by this is remarkable. Better than Audigy, and takes a lot of strain away from the processor, resulting in better performance when watching dolby encoded DVD's etc. Read reviews on the web to be sure.
yeah, i was thinking the KT400 didnt have much improvement over the KT333 and i know nvidia make good stuff! the review at hexus.net looks pretty good too! only beaten in quake 3 by the P4 2.3ghz (or sommat ) it has series ATA Raid too, so I suppose thats all good because i tihnk its gonna become the standard soon enough (if it is as good as it makes itself out to be ) the abit has the MCP2-T Southbridge! I take it thats either what you meant or an updated version thanks!
well the nforce2 vs the kt400 - thats easy, the nforce2 the kt400 chipset blows, its crappy however, VIA is going to release an updated version, it'll be called kt400a most likely, or kt400ce, or whatever via feels like naming it. When the kt400a (rev2) comes out, IMO it'll swamp the nforce2
according to zapwizard, who works for AMD R&D, the Nforce2 Chipset owns all of the available chipsets when running a hammer.
yeah, but ill be assed if im waiting for a KT400 update!!! It probly wont be too much better too just, a little bit maybe, not worth upgrading. I think I will go for the nForce2
The a7n8x IS an nForce2 board. If you were to go for an nForce board. This is the one I'd recommend. 8-ball
yeah, but again the KT400 chipset on that doesnt seem to compare to the nforce2! and at the £100 budget, the one i want is a little bit over that! and the nforce has a few advantages over the KT400 (like DDDR and being better ). Both have AGP 8x which is what i want. I dunno what the kt400 has that the nforce2 doesnt. And although that board look pretty swell I tihnk i still prefer the abit (plu the fan on the abit is cooler )
oh wel, i didnt read that reply before i posted that. In that case i will swiftly take a look into it now i have.. Its quite a bit more expensive. However it does have double LAN, which is pretty sweet! I hear the nforce 2 supports this. Does this mean on all mobos, its just a matter of gaining 2 ports (so the mobo and a NIC may do the trick ?)
Depends what you want. The Abit KD-7 totally owns if you want max overclock. It isn't really even close. The Abit NF-7 is so far not getting very good reviews, and lacks the 4 holes around the CPU needed for heavy duty cooling. The review I read the board had a pretty lousy FSB overclock. OTOH, if you just want the features on the board and forget overclock, there's better boards to choose from than the Abit. I understand the Asus A7N8X is a decent compromise on features vs overclock, but I think the KD7 still owns it on all out overclock. Enjoy!
have you read the review at hexus.net ? they seem to like the NF7-S quite alot! The KD7 seems to quite quite BAD reviews too, that was my choice before the Gigabyte GA-7VAXP, and now its th NF7-S. Where did you read your review from ?
I've read some less than great comments about the ABIT board. Another option is the Chaintech Zenith board. Its black with yellow plastic bits and has one of the best feature sets of any nForce2 board. I'll try and find the review I read which compared them all. 8-ball
cool! cheers. It s abit hard to find reviews from search engines! even google gives me crap results edit! WHOA! have you seen the price on greatness of this ? http://www.vr-zone.com/reviews/Chaintech/7NJS/ . the chaintech certainly looks sweet, but its gonna cost many many many pretty pennys!
I think you've got confused, because nForce isn't a hammer chipset, can not run hammers and never has been or will be able to, and I know that Zapwizard knows that, so you've got it wrong somewhere....
I could have been wrong, and in fact probably always are... I know it was somethign dealing with Niforce, but I dont know what...
Isaacs right with regards to Nforce 2 and Hammers....you won't see any prototype hammer board with Nforce 2 in its current implementation, though you might see hammer boards with an Nvidia southbridge.... The KD7 is a good board but for me the benefits of the Nforce 2 offerings from Asus and Abit outweigh any benefits of the KD7... 1) Nforce chipset (its not VIA! Which can only be a good thing ) 2) Dual DDR memory - Okay so its not a huge performance winner, but any memory bandwidth can help. 3) Integrated Dolby Digital sound by hardware (on the boards with 'sound storm' enabled southbridge). In terms of sound quality this is supposed to rival the Audigy, mighty impressive for an onboard solution. 4) Integrated Firewire 5) Lockable AGP and PCI bus, something that is very useful for overclocking as any P4 + i845x owners will realise when overclocking. Something that many overclockers have been hoping to see on the AMD platform for some time! 6) Decent voltage options (on the Asus, Abit and Epox offerings) 7) Incredible options for async memory and fsb operations. FSB:Memory ratios to allow memory to be run from (IIRC) 50% to 200% of cpu fsb, so with dual DDR you can still obtain a good overclock on the cpu with lower rated memory, and still give the CPU enough bandwidth at a high fsb. IMHO Nforce 2 is the platform of choice for the SoA platform atm P.S. I hear Abit may modify the design of the NF-7S to feature the mounting holes needed to attach heatsinks such as the Alpha 8045 or Swiftech.
im not really interested in putting abigass heatsink + fan in im not really into OCing! and the NF7 (the abit on hexus.net) has WAY WAY WAY better results than any of the KT400 boards! I could however do with a comparison of the Top KT400 boards, and ALL of the Nvidia2 boards!
Anandtech will be posting a roundup of 6 nForce2 boards in the next few days so keep checking their site. ::HERE:: Hope this helps 8-ball
